Despite plenty of warnings from friends in the West to conduct a clean election, Ukraine has failed. This means that the hope of repairing its relations with Europe and the U.S. has faded, and prospects of signing an association agreement or receiving loans from the International Monetary Fund has moved even further away from the agenda.
Worse still, Ukraine’s officials show no signs that they are going to act
on criticism of the West.
On Oct. 29, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s election
watchdog ODIHR released a preliminary report on Ukraine’s election, sharply
criticizing the campaign and vote tabulation. The report said harassment of
opposition candidates, use of administrative resources, the jailing of
opposition leaders and lack of media freedom have profoundly affected the
election.
“Considering the abuse of power, and the excessive role of money in
this election, democratic progress appears to have reversed in Ukraine,”
said Walburga Habsburg Douglas, head of the OSCE mission.
The U.S. State Department chimed in, saying in a statement that Ukraine’s
election was “a step backwards” for the nation.
European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security
Policy and Vice President of the European Commission Catherine Ashton and EU Commissioner
for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy Stefan Fuele warned Ukraine to
straighten the suspicious vote tabulation, which stretched for several days
after the vote and produced a result that gave the ruling Party of Regions and
Communist allies more lead than numerous exit polls had predicted.
President Viktor Yanukovych said Ukraine, of course, will work with the
international community to fix the problems they discovered, but indicated that
the official Kyiv did not think much of them.
“I am happy that according to preliminary evaluation of many Ukrainian and
domestic observers, including OSCE, the election, from the technical point of
view, proceeded well. The voters had a wide choice of candidates. The process
of voting was positively assessed by the observers,” Yanukovych said in a statement on Oct. 29.
His aide Hanna Herman went even further and said that OSCE’s assessment
of the election indicates that Ukraine “has made a step in the right
direction.”
This is not the reaction the West had hoped for.
Habsburg-Douglas, head of the OSCE observers’ mission, told the Kyiv
Post she felt it was “quite good” that the election report was critical because
the international observers “have really taken it to our hearts” and acted as
friends, pointing out the flaws and
hoping Ukraine will act on criticism.
“We write a report, and we
discuss with the government what can be done,” she said, adding that Audrey
Glover, who led the OSCE/ODIHR election observation mission, started her
meetings with government officials on Oct. 29, the day the report was issued.
But Marietta de Pourbaix-Lundin, co-rapporteur on Ukraine for the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe, said she was worried that things will go in
a very different direction. “I really wonder if they are going to talk to us
again,” she said after hearing the OSCE report.
“Sometimes it’s very hard to understand the way they [leadership] think
in Ukraine. Sometimes I think they act counter-productive to themselves,” she
said. “They could turn to the East, instead.”
The East, meaning Russia, may be happy with the turn. At odds with official
Europe and the US itself, Russian leaders have been trying to lure Ukraine into
a customs union for years, promising cheaper gas and other benefits in exchange
for loyalty. As expected, the Commonwealth of Independent States election
monitoring mission approved of Ukraine’s election, dismissing violations as minor.
A Western diplomat based in Kyiv, who spoke to Kyiv Post on the condition
of anonymity because he is not authorized to comment publicly, said that
Ukraine’s election would give a lot of ammunition to the “pro-values” lobby in
Europe, which is pushing for a freeze in a relationship with Ukraine and
negotiations on signing an asssociation agreement until it gets back on the
path of democracy.
The official European policy on Ukraine is expected to be on the agenda
of the meeting of European foreign ministers on Nov. 12.
Jan Tombinski, head of the EU Delegation in Ukraine, said the ODIHR/OSCE
report, as one of the basic elements for assessing the legitimacy of the future
parliament, will certainly affect the
relationship between EU and Ukraine. “[But] it’s too early to say how big
the impact is going to be.”
Others are less cautious, predicting a potential deep, long freeze.
“These elections could have changed the direction of relations with the West. They would not have been enough by themselves to have normalized relations, that would require an end to selective prosecutions and the freeing of Ms. [Yulia] Tymoshenko and Mr. [Yuriy] Lutsenko, but they could have improved the climate,” said another Kyiv-based diplomat.
“Instead, however, the conduct as criticized by the OSCE, has reinforced the sense that the Yanukovych government is continuing to backslide on democracy.”
And the consequences of that, the diplomat said, could include problems getting back on track with the IMF, increased investment risk, and further diplomatic isolation.
Kyiv Post editor Katya
Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected]
